Local restaurants pulled spinach from the menu – just in case – while Maine’s chief health officer on Saturday said the state was processing health care providers’ samples to see if anyone else here ate bagged, contaminated spinach that’s sickened people across the U.S.

So far just two people in Maine, women in Aroostook and Kennebec counties, have had the same genetic strain of E. coli linked to the national outbreak.

Both were ill the third week of August and have fully recovered, Dr. Dora Mills said. Only the woman in Kennebec County specifically remembered eating bagged spinach.

Neither required a hospital stay.

Mills, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, encouraged people to throw out any bagged fresh spinach or mixed greens containing spinach, and give all other fruits and vegetables, even bagged lettuce, another wash.

Maine typically records 12 to 24 cases of E. coli each year. Symptoms include diarrhea and cramps. The most common causes here, Mills said, are undercooked hamburger and raw milk.

The state is at 13 cases right now.

As news of the outbreak broke at the end of the week, she asked health care providers to be more vigilant about looking for and reporting cases.

“We have gotten some calls and are in the process of processing the samples,” she said.

All the spinach at Blackie’s Farm Fresh Produce in Auburn was pulled from the shelves as word of the E. coli scare spread Thursday night and Friday morning. Restaurants that the company supplies were called and two boxes of spinach were immediately returned to one of the stand’s wholesale suppliers. The remaining spinach is stored in a cooler for the state health inspector.

Spinach is not a huge seller, so losing the greens has not been a big problem, said one employee.

“We had a couple people concerned about the lettuce,” said clerk Lisa McKinney, of Auburn.

The lettuce, she explained to them, is perfectly fine.

Edwin Hackel, at the Auburn Mall farmer’s market representing Jillson’s Farm Stand, said the national scare has had little effect on business.

“Nobody here has spinach,” he said, so there’s been no sales boom from shoppers experiencing a sudden urge to “buy local.”

He said the Maine spinach crop- a “cold weather crop” – came and went in early spring. The season lasts only about a month because the spinach is cut young when the leaves are tender.

At most, the scare has been something to talk about with customers.

David Bishop, manager at Pat’s Pizza in Auburn, said that restaurant had kept serving spinach and hadn’t gotten any questions from customers.

“We didn’t pull it and we haven’t had any requests to pull it,” he said. “It’s packaged in Massachusetts, we weren’t concerned.”

Mac’s Grill in Auburn and DaVinci’s in Lewiston both went without, according to management.

“We have just (pulled spinach) out of precaution. I’m 99.9 percent sure we’re not carrying that product, but you never know,” said Nancy Berube, dining room manager at Mac’s.